


Revenge Is Sweet (Love Is Sweeter)

by kuro



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:37:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2622035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro/pseuds/kuro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Tony are stood up by their respective friends. As revenge, they decide to start fake-dating, hoping to shock and annoy their friends. It works surprisingly well. The dating part, not the annoying part. (Well, maybe that, too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revenge Is Sweet (Love Is Sweeter)

“Hey,” said the boy, sitting at Steve’s table in the coffee shop without asking Steve if the seat was already taken or not. “You’re Sam’s friend, aren’t you?”

Steve frowned, looking at the boy a little more closely. Sunglasses, wild hair, band t-shirt, younger than Steve. It rung a bell, Steve was pretty sure he’d seen him around before. “You’re…one of Rhodey’s friends?” he eventually ventured a guess.

“Yup,” Mr. Sunglasses affirmed with a big grin on his face, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms behind his head. “Call me Tony. Sure looks like they bailed out on us, huh.”

“Sam wouldn’t-” Steve started, but Tony made a tsking noise.

“There’s a first time for everything,” he said. “And well, you’re here, I’m here, might as well have some fun. What was your name again?”

“Steve,” Steve reluctantly told him.

“Well, Steve,” Tony smiled, finally taking off his sunglasses. ~~He had pretty, warm eyes.~~ “It’s nice to meet you.”

* * *

 

Tony ordered a coffee and kept talking at Steve as if he didn’t notice Steve’s initial discomfort. Tony was, despite his initial arrogant conduct, surprisingly funny and entertaining, so it didn’t take long for Steve to join in the conversation. They quickly learned that they actually knew a lot of things about each other through their mutual friends, because both Sam and Rhodey would be going on and on about their (annoying) childhood friends all the time.

By the time they noticed, an hour had already passed, and still none of their friends had turned up. Steve found that for once, he didn’t mind. At all. Tony was funny and enthusiastic and a complete nerd, and he somehow managed to get Steve to open up about his art and his mother and all those other small things that were really important to him, but that he didn’t really talk about usually. Tony encouraged him and really listened to him, in a way no one but his closest friends did.

He felt reluctant to part, but after several hours of incessant chatting (and about five cups of coffee) Tony announced that he really needed to leave now. Steve, a little disappointed, nodded, quietly hoping that Sam would meet up with Rhodey and his friends again soon.

“Listen,” Tony said when he got ready to leave. “Let’s have a little revenge on our friends. When they mention anything about today, let’s tell them that when they didn’t show up, we had a date instead. Whirlwind romance, you know, totally in love and stuff. Put on a bit of a show.”

“I…” Steve’s heart started hammering in his chest when he heard the word ‘date’. Did that mean they’d meet again? He smiled slightly wonky smile. “Yeah, sure. We should force them to meet up again with all of us and listen to us flirt.”

“A man after my own heart,” Tony laughed, handing a piece of paper with a few numbers scrawled on it over to Steve. “Here, my number. Call me tonight, okay? So we can make some evil revenge dating plans.”

Steve nodded, but Tony had already run off.

* * *

 

Steve was extremely nervous when he made the call that night, but it turned out the he really didn’t have to. Tony was just _so_ easy to talk to, and the call ended up taking several hours. They mostly randomly talked about a variety of different subjects. A fight erupted when it came to their taste in movies and music, but they also amicably agreed that cinnamon rolls were the best thing ever. Tony introduced Steve to Dum-e over the phone, a robot he had apparently built himself and that answered with beeping sounds when you talked to him. When Steve had to finally end the call because he couldn’t keep his eyes open, he was both extremely giddy and completely relaxed.

Sam took the news in with wide eyes.

“Wait,” he suddenly exclaimed somewhere in the middle of Steve’s story. “You’re already dating? After you only just met yesterday? Steve, you dog, you move _fast_!”

Steve only shrugged, blushing a little. He was secretly thrilled that Sam seemed to actually believe him. (Everybody knew how bad he was at lying.) Natasha, next to him, wordlessly pulled out her phone and started typing wildly. A moment later, she looked up, a surprised expression on her face. “Pepper just confirmed. She wants to meet you, by the way. Get ready for some _very_ thorough examination, Pepper is not kidding around.”

“Well, I have you as a friend, that must basically disqualify me,” Steve mumbled under his breath, which earned him a vicious glare from Natasha.

* * *

 

Pepper did, in fact, approve of Steve, after some very thorough inspection (that was a joint effort with Rhodey). Tony sat next to him the whole time, grinning like a Cheshire cat. When Steve stuttered and stumbled his way through his answers to Peppers probing questions, he even took Steve’s hand into his own. Which didn’t help at all, because now, Steve was also blushing in addition to the stuttering.

“Oh god, you’re going to be totally gross and domestic, aren’t you?” Bucky groaned, leaning back in his seat until he nearly fell of the chair.

“Says the whipped boy,” Steve mumbled, shooting a meaningful look towards Natasha, who grinned and raised an eyebrow at him.

Bucky looked like he wanted to protest, but he knew better than risk offending Natasha.

* * *

 

“Oh my god, they actually bought it,” Tony cackled when they went back to Tony’s apartment (where he apparently lived alone). “Come on, I’ll order us pizza, tell me what you want.”

They ended up on the couch, eating pizza and drinking soda and fighting about their taste in movies. Tony insisted on enlightening him about sci-fi trash movies, which Steve was really not about. (He definitely _did not laugh_ about that dumb alien thing, no sir, no.)

They kept watching so many movies and stayed up so late that Tony decided he couldn’t possibly let Steve walk home in the middle of the night, and let him spend the night on his couch. They didn’t really sleep, though, but kept talking to each other until the sun rose and both of them realised that _shit_ , they had classes they needed to go to.

A few days later, Steve decided it was time for revenge, and he made Tony watch a few excellent Indie films. Tony kept moaning and groaning about how bad and boring they were, but Steve saw him tear up during _all_ of the dramatic scenes. He booked it as a success.

Tony then decided that _he_ wanted revenge via game console. Tony had probably thought Steve was a complete noob, but Steve ended up wiping the floor with him at Mario Kart, Tekken, Super Smas Bros., hell, even that Wii bowling game. In the end, Tony threw his controller away and stomped out of the room in a fit of anger. Steve, grinning like an idiot, went after him in a more sedate pace and managed to coax Tony back out of his room after cajoling him for a while.

“Why are you so good at those games?” Tony pouted when he finally opened the door.

“I was always sick as a child, and playing games with me was Bucky’s idea of taking care of me,” Steve shrugged. “I’d have let you win, but if I hadn’t been putting in actual effort, you would’ve gotten angry anyway, right?”

“Grrr, you already know me too well,” Tony grumbled, bumping into Steve’s shoulder to show that he wasn’t _really_ angry. “Come on, let’s order something expensive, my treat.”

* * *

 

It became a habit. Their friend groups had started to merge, so they spent more and more time together in their general free time. But they also spent a lot of time as a pair, watching movies, playing games, talking to each other all night long. Sometimes, Steve went over to Tony’s place and they just quietly worked on their own stuff, the comfortable silence interrupted by Dum-e’s beeping from time to time. Sometimes, they went shopping or eating out, or Tony got into one of his special moods, and he’d take Steve to a beach or a circus or some other place.

Steve would sleep at Tony’s place several times a week, mostly because it was usually him that visited Tony. (Tony liked to stay close to his bots and the workshop he had installed in one of the rooms of the apartment. Steve also lived in a dorm, so it was never quiet.) Steve would cook and nag when Tony forgot that he was only human and needed regular nourishment, and Tony would in turn listen to Steve whining when he felt stressed by his classes and give him hugs when he had a bad day.

It felt good and natural and they would have probably carried on that way for a good while longer.

If it hadn’t been for the girl.

* * *

 

It hadn’t been her fault, really. She had just seen them out and about one evening, having fun with their friends at a bar, not thought too much about it and started hitting on Steve. Steve, who had been trading jokes and jabs with Sam just moments before, was blindsided by the sudden attention and had kind of missed the window to gently turn her down.

So he had flailed a little, trying to figure out a way to get away from her aggressive flirting, until Tony had suddenly stood up and stormed out of the bar.

“Ooops,” Bucky commented with a snigger. “You should go after him. I think your boyfriend was seriously pissed.”

 _We’re not boyfriends,_ Steve wanted to answer, but then he remembered that for the rest of the world, they probably were. All their friends had accepted them as a couple. Everyone knew that the two of them were always sitting on top of each other. They knew everything about each other from their favourite desserts down to their preferred type of underwear.

Now that Steve thought about it, best friends probably didn’t parade around in their underwear in front of each other.

He shoved the girl aside rather roughly (he would probably feel sorry about that later) and went after Tony without a moment of hesitation.

* * *

 

“Come on, Tony, let me in,” Steve begged, knocking at the closed front door of Tony’s apartment. “I know you’re in there.”

Steve could hear shuffling and crinkling, but the door stayed firmly closed.

“Tony, please,” Steve repeated. He was perfectly willing to stay in front of that door the whole night if he had to.

“ _No_ ,” the answer eventually came. “ _I’m not going to open that door just so you can break up with me._ ”

“Heyyy, no,” Steve tried to reassure Tony in the gentlest tone he could possibly manage. “I would never want to break up with you.”

“ _…really?_ ”

“I promise,” Steve answered. “I swear on my Iron Man boxer shorts. I happen to know you’ve been eyeing them up.”

The lock clicked, and Tony’s sad face appeared in the door crack.

“I was really eyeing you up,” he confessed. “But the boxers aren’t too bad, either.”

“Great, then,” Steve smiled. “Can I come in now?”

“I guess?” Tony said, still sounding unsure.

Steve made a small ‘come closer’ gesture with his hand. Tony, curious as always, opened the door slightly and moved a little closer, until he was close enough for Steve to give him a soft kiss on his cheek.

“Okay?” Steve asked, blushing a little.

“Okay,” Tony murmured back, taking hold of his shirt and pulling him inside. “No breaking up, then?”

“Definitely no breaking up,” Steve assured him, giving Tony another kiss on his nose.

* * *

 

“You weren’t actually dating until _yesterday_?” Rhodey asked, his voice going uncharacteristically high-pitched at the end. “You were fake-dating to fool us? You _didn’t realise we set you guys up on a blind date_?” Rhodey looked positively ready to pull out his eyebrows out of sheer desperation.

“Oh my god, guys, I _told_ you these two were too dense,” Natasha interjected, rolling her eyes. “I mean, _congratulations_ for finally getting your heads out of your asses, but really. I told you it won’t work.”

“Well, it did…in the end,” Tony sniggered from where he was perched on Steve’s lap like a particularly satisfied cat.

“Oh wait, if you weren’t dating before…” Bucky suddenly groaned, “does that mean you’re going to get even _more_ lovey-dovey now?? Oh hell, _no_!”

Tony laughed loudly at Bucky’s desperation, but his smiled turned soft around the edges when he looked over to Steve.

“I guess we will,” he whispered, giving Steve a kiss on his forehead.

In the background, he could hear several distinct _thunks_ and a few curse words in Russian.

Steve found he didn’t actually care. They had brought it onto themselves, after all.


End file.
